As the sophistication of phone service has increased, consumers, such as subscribers/users, have the ability to install multiple phones in a residence or small business. Such phones may be land line telephones (i.e., telephones that are hardwired to a telephone network) or may be mobile telephones (e.g., cellular telephones or the like). Additionally, these phones may have multiple shared phone numbers associated with individual phones or each phone may have its own separate private phone number. Further, services such as voicemail boxes may be associated with an individual private phone or shared phones.
The numerous combinations of telephones, telephone numbers, and services must be initially configured to insure that all phone, phone number, and services (e.g., voicemail box options) are properly associated with one another. Furthermore, as the needs of subscribers/users change, the telephones, telephone numbers, and services may need to be reconfigured. In terms of initial configuration, a Consumer Voice over Internet Protocol (CVoIP) product, which routes consumer telephone calls over Internet Protocol (IP) networks requires set up including mapping customer Single Sign-On (SSO) within a household to telephones and voicemail boxes. One challenge is to automate the configuration processes and/or the reconfiguration processes, while at the same time obeying the business rules for CVoIP and voicemail.
Currently, the set up of telephone service, voicemail boxes, etc. for different users in the same household requires expertise from the service provider. This service is costly in terms of resources and creates antagonism by a customer if the service is inadequate or untimely. Further, such service may require information from a customer thereby inconveniencing the customer who must be present when service is initiated. Customers may set up the voicemail and telephone services, but currently customers cannot set up voicemail and telephone services specific to a particular user in a household for whom it is desired to have different services or access to different voicemail boxes. That is, consumer (i.e., home) telephone services provide only a single level of access during which full system access is allowed. For example, a consumer telephone service conventionally includes only a single login that provides any person logging in with the ability to configure or reconfigure systems and/or services. Such a full access-type configuration prevents segmentation between users of a particular consumer system. Thus, users either have complete and total control over the system or no control whatsoever.